Page 62 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

All this serves as cultural and ideological background to the
current Western-styled management of natural resources. Hence colonization
of highly rich and productive tropical forests, all in the name of private
property rights and so-called forest “scientific management”, by way of
selective logging for example. But that only amounts to fragmenting the
tropical resources base, and thus jeopardizing its ecological equilibrium, as
earlier mentioned. This is the main and primary cause of deforestation as
we all are witnessing today. All the reforestation attempts and projects only
are bound to fail to reverse those destructive trends. But, then, logging
business is only part of the whole story. Industrial-styled plantations also
play their part in accelerating deforestation and loss of bio-diversity. As we
all know, most plantation schemes are dominated by large-scale monocultures
of exotic industrial species like eucalyptus, thus encroaching upon the
basic principle of natural diversity and integrity. 6
There is also another side of the story, that is, concerning indigenous
people and communities’ predicaments under the circumstances. It is
succinctly illustrated by one distinguished economic historian, Karl Polanyi,
in his classic The Great Transformation as to rural dislocation and disruption
of cultural institutions inherent in an organic society and community. The
term “organic society” significantly conveys a strong sense of self-identities
of indigenous people and communities. It explains why the idea and practice
of “collective rights” have now been emerging, after being subject to
domination and exploitation ever since the heydays of colonialism and
modernization. That social and cultural disintegration inevitably means a
great human loss. The point is that the survival of tropical forests and
therefore bio-diversity integrity depend in the last analysis on the survival
of human societies themselves. These adverse and negative effects clearly
explain how the scientific management of natural resources has been

6
J. Bankyopadhyay and Vadana Shiva, op. cit. pp. 68-70.
56 OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND